Discussion questions (week 10)

Remember to type out your answers to these questions if you want to get credit for ideas that you don't have a chance to share in discussion!

1. Our discussions of Shakespeare often return to his discussion of power -- perhaps the power sought by monarchs (Theseus, Henry, Macbeth) or the power sought by private citizens (Hermia and Lysander, Shylock, Pistol). But how does Kurt Vonnegut discuss power and the powerful in Slaughterhouse V? How is this discussion of power different from and similar to the discussion of power in the Shakespeare plays (and sonnets) we have read -- particularly Henry V and Macbeth? Why is Vonnegut treating power similarly to the way Shakespeare treats it? Why is he treating it differently?
   
   
2. [This question might be rewritten later this week if I can think of a better way to phrase it.] In what ways does Shakespeare's narrative technique in Henry V and in Macbeth seem similar to Vonnegut's narrative technique in Slaughterhouse V? Think, here, about the order in which the two writers put their plots together: the use of the Chorus in H5, say, or of the problematic narrator in S5. You might think about how all three texts move between the supernatural (God in H5, the Tralfamadorians in S5, the witches/Fates in M) and the ordinary.